Last night I started on the fuselage by framing out the base for the bun.

I got you covered

This past weekend my Dad and his main squeeze Gini came by to help Allison (my main squeeze) and I stretch the paper over the main wing sections. It is a process that goes pretty easily when you have a few people. The process goes like this. My dad applied glue to the wing ribs, Gini and Allison wet the center of each piece of paper with a roller leaving the edges that get glued in place dry. Next they applied glue to the edges and when the glue gets a little tacky I place them on the wing ribs, making sure the seams are smooth. The cool thing is by wetting the paper down the middle it expands letting you glue it down and when it dries it shrinks giving you a nice tight wing covering.

IT'S TOO BIG!

That's what she said! Hehehe! Well, last night after assembling the second wing section and temporally putting the upper middle wing section in place it is apparent that the Red Hot Flyer II is freaking huge. The wing span right now is almost 24 feet and with a addition of wing tips it will be 28 feet. I know size does matter but this is a bit ridiculous. What was I thinking? So I think I have decided to reduce the size of the center wing sections by almost half and possibly cut down the size of the wing tips a bit as well.

WINGing it 2.0

This week I have started building the upper and lower middle wing sections. These sections are what will attach the wings to the Red Hot Flyer II. The upper wing will attach to the bun via two struts and the bottom wing is actually comprised of three pieces. The two larger outer sections will attach to the smaller middle section which will be built into the RHF2 bun.

WINGing it 1.3

Construction continues on the four main wing sections. Last night I glued the cardboard strips to the leading edges of the wings and started working on finishing up the undersides of the wings. I should be able to finish this up tonight. Then it is on to the center wing sections and the wing tips. I hope to do a test assembly of the whole wing this weekend.

WINGing it 1.2

This weekend I continued to work on the four wing sections that I have been building. All, four sections are 75% complete. I had A LOT of help from my very supportive girlfriend and on Sunday, one of my teammates, Seth, came over to help me. We cut and glued up all the trailing edges of the wings, cut out the leading edge portions of the ribs out of foam then glued and nailed them into place. Holes were cut out of the cardboard on the trailing edge to help reduce weight; the center rib sections were topped with a strip of cardboard and the top part of the leading edge ribs have been covered with cardboard strips.

I'm WINGing It!

This weekend was not as productive as I would have liked due to a few necessary distractions. The first distraction was for some inspiration. I had to go see The Dark Knight, which by the way was awesome and the second was to celebrate my girlfriends birthday which brought a big smile to her face. Anyway,  back to the Red Hot Flyer II, I am 90% finished with the 4 wing struts. I spent time reenforcing then with foam and added blocking for wire bracing if needed. I have also moved on to building the first wing section. There are 6 main wing sections and 4 wing tips making up about 55 feet of wing length. After all it is a biplane.